You Don't Mess Around With Jim

You Don't Mess Around With Jim

Jim Croce (#8 in 1972)

Uptown's got its hustlers / The Bowry's got its bums
Forty-second street's got Big Jim Walker / He's a pool-shootin' son of a gun
Well he's big and dumb as a man can come / But he's stronger than a country hoss
And when the bad folks all get together at night / You know they all call Big Jim "boss"
(Just because ...) / (They say ...)

	You don't tug on Superman's cape
	You don't spit into the wind
	You don't pull the mask of the old Lone Ranger
	And you don't mess around with Jim

(Ba-doo-da-doo-doo doo-doo-doo-doo doot)

Well out of South Alabama come a country boy
He said I'm lookin' for a man named Jim
I am a pool-shootin' boy, my name is Willie McCoy
But back home they call me Slim
He said I'm lookin' for the king of forty-second street
He's drivin' a drop-top Cadillac
And last week he took all my money, and it may sound funny
But I come to get my money back
(And everybody say, Jack -- don't you know that...) Chorus

Well a hush fell over the pool room
When Jimmy come boppin' in off the street
And when the cuttin' was done, the only part that wasn't bloody
Was the soles of the big man's feet / He was cut in 'bout a hundred places
And he was shot in a couple more
And you better believe they sung a different kind of story
When Big Jim hit the floor / (And now they say)

	You don't tug on Superman's cape
	You don't spit into the wind
	You don't pull the mask of the old Lone Ranger
	And you don't mess around with Slim